yet another life update.

April 7, 2016: And so I was faced with a huge act of bravery – saying no. Revoking my contract, letting people down, encountering possible judgment. And yet, I was doing this great big thing that I’ve been working on for the past 28 ½ years – honoring myself. Learning what makes me happy, and then doing it. Taking care of myself, fiercely.

Four and a half years ago I moved to Hanoi, Vietnam, with really high hopes and an English teaching contract. I’d quit my job, broken up with my boyfriend, moved out of my apartment, put my things in storage, said my goodbyes, flew across the world alone.

And then I changed my mind.

Four and a half years ago I wrote a blog post titled, “When the only thing braver than saying yes is saying no.” I’d been in Vietnam for two weeks and agonized over my decision not to stay. It felt like I was in a thick cloud, low visibility, unable to see two steps ahead. And so I took one step at a time. And hoped for the best.

That decision ended up being one of the best I’d ever made. It changed everything. There in the thick of confusion and doubt and fear, I repeated My heart is smart and I can be brave, and closed my eyes and trusted. I went on to make new friends and backpack Southeast Asia solo and move to Australia and then continue backpacking solo. It was a chapter of adventure and happiness but also a lesson in listening to my heart.

It’s four and a half years later and there are so many parallels to that time, now. 2020 is a different world compared to 2016 and yet I feel like I’m living it again, the similarities between worlds too apparent to ignore.

I took a leap, albeit a more spontaneous one, and left Denver for LA in the midst of a pandemic. I needed to leave Denver. My job was ending, I could not live with my sister anymore, my relationship was imploding, and I did not want to stay. I had a complicated relationship with Denver, and while it was the exact right step I needed when I arrived back in October, it wasn’t a place I wanted to stay.

On a whim, I looked at live-in nanny jobs in LA, a city I’d been considering moving to back in February before the pandemic hit, a city where one of my best friends lives. I thought a live-in role could be a nice transition, and sent off a message to a happy-looking family seeking a nanny.

It was a coincidence when they ended up being a relatively high-profile Australian family, and it was pure serendipity when they ended up distantly knowing the family I’d lived with in Sydney. The synchronicity of it all canceled out any red flags I was spotting, and with my deadline for leaving Denver looming closer, I decided to go for it. I was moving to LA.

I rented a car and drove the sixteen hours in one day, alone, never one to shy away from a solo travel opportunity. As the sun set, I wove through desert roads listening to Ray LaMontagne’s new album, the one that’d come out in June, the one I hadn’t let myself listen to yet for fear of it becoming associated with the tumultuous breakup that consumed my last days in Denver. Carmella greeted me in Joshua Tree and we spent a magical few days in the desert, per our triannual tradition. I arrived in LA, stayed a few days in another magical Airbnb at the foot of a mountain, and wrote this post, all about my journey to California. As I breathed in the morning air and listened to the birds sing, I felt more like myself than I had in months, maybe even years. 

I spoke on the phone to a friend. Ah, there you are, she’d said. You’re back.

Despite feeling like I was exactly where I needed to be, I went to bed the night before moving in to the family’s home with an ever-growing sense of trepidation. I would return my rental car and say goodbye to my freedom. I would move into a new neighborhood in a new city with no car and would work six days a week. The hopeful feeling I’d had in Denver had dissipated. I felt sure that I’d made the best decision I could, the one step when I couldn’t see two, and yet now I wondered how that decision would play out.

I don’t feel totally comfortable explaining why the job didn’t work out, but the job didn’t work out. I could write for days about why it didn’t work out, but perhaps that’s not something I’m willing to share here, at least now.

Perhaps I can share about how I felt, though. I felt desperately stuck and sad and lonely. I felt undervalued and disrespected. I felt absurdly angry. I found myself in a world that felt foreign and bizarre, experiencing something close to culture shock. I found myself feeling confident, early on, that I couldn’t stay.

Culture shock in Hanoi, culture shock in Hancock Park.
Feeling I couldn’t stay in Hanoi, feeling I couldn’t stay in Hancock Park.
Coaching myself through big fears in Hanoi, coaching myself through big fears in Hancock Park.
The similarities went on.

I thought back to what I did with these feelings in Hanoi, how I got through them. It was over four years ago but it feels like yesterday, the emotions now living in the very cells of my being, that decision that would change so much still very present in my heart. I channeled that 28-year-old self, the one who protected her desires fiercely and stood up for what she believed in and bravely took a step forward even when she couldn’t see the next one.

And I changed my mind.

I did not stay in Hancock Park. Back to the rental car place, filling another car with my suitcases and boxes and plants, turning right around and stepping back into a life full of unknowns. I technically had nowhere to go, no full-time job, no next step. Just like in Hanoi, I suddenly found myself devoid of any real plan. Untethered, adrift, uncertain.

And yet, and yet. The further I drove away from Hancock Park, the more freedom bubbled up. The more space that was made, the more joy rushed in. I felt light, open, free.

I booked into an Airbnb on a beautiful tree-lined street. I slept soundly and felt like I could have slept for years. Carmella and I went to the beach. I played tourist and went to see important LA sites like the Dunder Mifflin building and the Father of the Bride house. I started dreaming of renting a camper van and driving the coast. Despite feeling nearly dizzy with the continued impermanence of my life, I felt more solid than I had in a long time.

I’ve been like a captured eagle /
You know an eagle’s born to fly /
Now that I’ve won my freedom /
Like an eagle, I am eager for the sky.
— Light of a Clear Blue Morning, The Wailin’ Jennys

The thing is, I’d never not been free. I spoke to my therapist on the phone one morning before leaving the job. You are no less free now than when you were driving through the desert last week, she told me. My particular constellation of cells errs on the side of trapped, a feeling of stuck in any situation, a long-held fear from childhood that still infiltrates my being as an adult. I tend to forget, often, that I am in fact always free.

I feel incredibly lucky that I had friends reminding me of this fact, in text messages and voice memos and phone calls and video chats. I feel incredibly lucky that I had friends offering me places to stay all over the country. Taking a leap of faith feels much less scary when you have a supportive net of friends to catch your potential fall.

Moving to a new city during a pandemic is perhaps not the wisest move. Especially one where you don’t know many people. Especially when you’ve recently gone through a particular bout of upheaval and heartbreak and change. Especially when the job you move there for doesn’t work out. Especially when you already feel so desperately tired of everything that is 2020.

I weighed my options carefully. It didn’t feel wise to stay in LA without a job, knowing only a handful of people. Suddenly I longed for familiarity, for comfort, for friends. A place I could stabilize a bit.

When we can’t see two steps ahead of us, taking the wisest next step is the most we can do. I’m still not certain it’s the “right” move, but I’m not certain there ever is a “right” move in life. And so I’m heading back to the East coast. Connecticut first, and then maybe Rhode Island again — the place I left four and a half years ago. Providence, a place that’s always felt like home. Maybe the only U.S. place that’s ever felt like home.

Perhaps I’ll change my mind again, I don’t know. Perhaps it won’t work out, and I’ll be writing to you again in another few months with a completely different plan. There’s really no way of knowing.

In my last few days in LA, I traded in my camper van idea for an extension of my rental car and a few more nights in Airbnbs, this time north of LA along the central coast of California up to Big Sur. At the same time as my desire for comfort and familiarity, I felt renewed in my hunger for exploration and adventure, wanting to see more of the coast than the small pocket I’d experienced, places like Venice and Santa Monica and Ventura. I wound my way along the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping to listen to waves crash against cliffs and to walk amongst coastal redwoods. I woke in the morning to gloom and fog, and creeped through the winding ocean roads thick with mist as I listened to Mary Oliver giving an interview to Krista Tippett, before she died.

I set out to save my own life, she said, referencing her childhood. I saved my own life by finding a place that wasn’t in that house. It was a very difficult time, and a long time.

My heart could have exploded with recognition. It swelled with love for my favorite poet, speaking what I couldn’t. Here I was, little by little, saving my own life.

Back in LA, I began preparing to leave, bequeathing my plants to Carmella and shipping boxes to Connecticut and consolidating my toiletries. I’d made two new friends when I’d arrived, fellow travelers who I’d connected with on Instagram, women who instantly felt like old friends, the kind you can talk to easily and without pretense. They gathered us together for a socially distanced dinner on my last night, serving homemade sangria and their favorite Mexican takeout, and we sat in the front garden until it got dark and my car had been marked with a parking ticket.

I’m feeling very attached to LA today, I told them bittersweetly. They tried to get me to stay, and it was nice to feel wanted. 

I started thinking about how my life has felt like a string of goodbyes in the last five years — I’ve said goodbye to people, cities, jobs, homes, of which there have been many. An absurd number, really. I’ve lived in Providence and Sydney and Chiang Mai and Denver, and spent more than a few weeks in France and Indonesia and Philadelphia. I’ve settled into too many temporary jobs to count, only to then have to move on from them. It’s been a lot of transition, and as I thought about transitioning away from yet another life, however short-lived, I started to feel bitter.

And quickly, that bitterness was replaced by gratitude. How lucky I am to get to say hello to so many new things, I thought. 

And truthfully, I wouldn’t want it any other way. In the last five years I’ve seen more upheaval and transition than ever before, and yet I’ve also experienced more joy and connection than ever before. I’ve met so many people and made friends all over the world and seen places I didn’t even know existed. I’ve explored new cities intimately, learning the names of their highways, the personalities of their neighborhoods, the languages they speak, their best foods.

Perhaps I’ll move back to LA someday, when there’s not a pandemic. It will always be there for me. Just like how maybe I’ll live in Thailand again someday, maybe I’ll move back to Sydney again someday, maybe I’ll try LA again someday.

Everything is temporary. Impermanence is more present than ever, now, the very fabric of 2020. And so I’ll go with the flow, doing my best, taking it one step at a time, trusting myself.

Here’s what I know, which is also how I ended my blog post back in April 2016: 

Do whatever you need to do to honor yourself. Make yourself happy. Make brave decisions. Consciously decide to fiercely protect your desires. As a wise friend said to me the day I left Providence, “Your heart is smart.” It knows. Listen to it, and trust it, and take a deep breath, and know that no matter what happens, you will always be safe. Safe and loved and held. Always.

Sending all my love, from Vietnam. (from New England)